Famous Confusion Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Confusion poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous confusion poems. These examples illustrate what a famous confusion poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Alexander Pope
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
DAUGHTER of Chaos’ doting years,
Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade
(The rights of sepulture now duly paid)
Spread abroad its hideous form
On the roaring civil storm,
Deafening din and warring rage
Factions wild with factions wage;
Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound,
Among the demons of the earth,
With groans that make the mountains shake,
...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
When all the world would keep a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.
When desperate Folly daily laboureth
To work confusion upon all we...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Long warned of many terrors more severe
To scorch him than hell’s engines could awaken,
He scanned again, too far to be so near,
The fearful seat no man had ever taken.
So many other men with older eyes
Than his to see with older sight behind them
Had known so long their one way to be wise,—
Was any...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book --
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Aug. 13. 1653.
Lord in thine anger do not reprehend me
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me Lord for I am much deject
Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,
For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,
Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore
And thou O Lord how long? turn Lord, restore
My soul, O save me for...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.1-8
S. M.
The church is the honor and safety of a nation.
[Great is the Lord our God,
And let his praise be great;
He makes his churches his abode,
His most delightful seat.
These temples of his grace,
How beautiful they stand!
The honors of our native place,
And bulwarks of our land.]
In Zion God is known,
A refuge in distress;
How bright has his salvation shone
Through all...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
He preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow --
The Broad are too broad to define
And of "Truth" until it proclaimed him a Liar --
The Truth never flaunted a Sign --
Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As Gold the Pyrites would shun --
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a Man!...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.
Or those begotten or unbegotten,
For I would not recall
Some that being unbegotten
Are not individual,
But copy some one action,
Moulding it of dust or...Read more of this...
by
Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal
shade,
On that confusion which thy death has made:
Or from Olympus' height look down, and see
A Town involv'd in grief bereft of thee.
Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead,
And rends the graceful tresses from her head,
Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest
Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast.
Too quickly fled, ah! whither...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
A Peevish Fellow laid his Head
On Pillows, stuff'd with Down;
But was no sooner warm in Bed,
With hopes to rest his Crown,
But Animals of slender size,
That feast on humane Gore,
From secret Ambushes arise,
Nor suffer him to snore;
Who starts, and scrubs, and frets, and swears,
'Till, finding all in vain,
He for Relief...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Long long I lay in the sands
Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
“We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit,
From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet.
You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes,—
Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet.
“You may swear that we are solid, you may say...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Chatterton
On Tiber's banks, Tiber, whose waters glide
In slow meanders down to Gaigra's side;
And circling all the horrid mountain round,
Rushes impetuous to the deep profound;
Rolls o'er the ragged rocks with hideous yell;
Collects its waves beneath the earth's vast shell;
There for a while in loud confusion hurl'd,
It crumbles mountains down and shakes the world....Read more of this...
by
Arthur Hugh Clough
"There is no God," the wicked saith,
"And truly it's a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
It's better only guessing."
"There is no God," a youngster thinks,
"or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
Always to be a baby."
"There is no God, or if there is,"
The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
If He should take it ill in...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!
Or who, with accent...Read more of this...
by
John Ashbery
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet andsalutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything--bush and tree--to take...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
A Song in Chinese Tapestries
"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"
"I will tell you...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow man sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely....Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
when the...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,
Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting,
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,
Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?
Old age, the graybeard! Well,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
She fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reason to refuse him.
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.
Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
When the two sisters go to fetch
water, they come to this spot and
they smile.
They must be aware of somebody
who stands behind the trees when-
ever they go to fetch water.
The two sisters whisper to each
other when they pass this spot.
They must have guessed the secret
of that somebody who stands behind
the trees whenever they go to
fetch water.
Their pitchers...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
See how, like lightest waves at play, the airy dancers fleet;
And scarcely feels the floor the wings of those harmonious feet.
Ob, are they flying shadows from their native forms set free?
Or phantoms in the fairy ring that summer moonbeams see?
As, by the gentle zephyr blown, some light mist flees in air,
As skiffs that skim adown the tide, when silver...Read more of this...
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